The Gnomon Workshop offers the most comprehensive set of Digital Production tutorials anywhere. The broad scope of the tutorials contained in this section range from foundational understanding of the software tools all the way to the professional application of these tools and concepts used by artists working in the film and game industries.

Entertainment Design

The Gnomon Workshop is widely regarded as the global leader in training tutorials for the designer working in the entertainment industry. With tutorials ranging from foundational drawing and design concepts to process tutorials from some of the top concept and character designers in the world, there is surely something here to inspire.

Tattooing

As the tattoo industry has seen an explosion in popularity over the last few years, the need training in this field has also grown. In these video tutorials, some of the top tattoo artists in the world share their techniques and their take on the art of tattoo. The tutorials range from absolute beginner level to advanced color and blending techniques used by some of the world's best.

Software

The Gnomon Workshop offers professional training on most of the software applications used in today's digital pipelines. There are foundational titles to introduce users to the software and tools, as well as advanced production titles that discuss application tools and processes vital to the production of digital assets and media.

The Gnomon Workshop seeks out the most highly-regarded traditional and digital artists and technicians currently working in the entertainment and design industries. Our instructors have shared their practices working at such top studios as Pixar, ILM, Blizzard, and many more.

Creature Rigging for Production

with Perry Leijten

Description

Character rigging is a process that starts the moment the design of a character is established. To get the most out of a character it involves a lot of communication between the modeler, the rigger and, whenever possible, the animator. This tutorial begins by working with the basic blockout ZBrush file from Ben Erdt's tutorial "Creature Modeling for Production" to start generating the skeleton. The rig is set up in several components, divided by the limbs, and aims to create a fully functional body rig before the modeler is done creating a clean topology. The components make use of IK, FK and Spline-IK systems with blending where necessary. Some python code is shared to speed up some of these workflows. Tools that are not part of the original Maya tool-set will be used to create controls and help out with skinning the basic blockout mesh. This will then become the base information used in the final mesh, where a second phase of rigging starts: adding the extra detail controls on the character. The end-result contains a rig that is easy to use for an animator and which can be directly used in a game engine. Perry uses some custom rigging scripts available for free to download at gumroad.com/peerke

Tags

Software Used

IMAGE GALLERY

Senior Technical Artist, Square Enix Tokyo

Perry Leijten is a technical artist specialized in rigging, but does not shy away from creating tools and snippets to speed up this process. Perry started out as a university teacher in Holland giving lectures in the basics of Maya modeling, rigging and python scripting, until he got a job offer from Guerrilla Games to help finish 'Killzone:Shadow Fall'. He is currently working on 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' as a senior technical artist. In his spare time he helps out indie studios including Ragesquid (Action Henk), TwirlBound (Pine) and works on the rigs for Marauder Film's short 'Is This Heaven.'

Working on Is This Heaven with Perry continues to blow me away with whatever he gets his hands on; from highly-complex hard-surface assets that far exceed the Transformers I've made to organic hero characters that rival my the scale of my work on Pacific Rim. Perry continues to give our animators absolute flexibility, simplicity and cleanliness while infusing the asset with a great depth of character. On many occasions, as is in film, Perry has created bespoke shot-specific rigs to fit the needs of the movement and/or composition. In short; Perry is a rare one, and he's dutch, which means: He's highly trustworthy and made of hardy material!

- Bastiaan KochWriter/Director at Marauder Film

Perry's rigging skill allowed him to rig--just for fun--one of the most accurate skeletal wrist assemblies I've ever seen. His willingness to tackle a complicated subject like that--and solve it--is impressive, but more than that, he is very good at explaining those kinds of subjects to other people--as I have personally witnessed when he has given advice to students at my university

- Andrew PaquetteSenior Lecturer - NHTV

Perry was one of my best students with great skill and a tremendous passion for rigging. It was a real pleasure to work with him while he was at an internship at Nazooka where he demonstrated he was capable of coming up with very elegant and creative rigging solutions.

- Kim GoossensGraphical Technical Director - Ubisoft

Perry is the most skilled rigger I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. His drive to constantly improve his tools and methods are unparalleled resulting in a very efficient workflow and high quality rigs setting the benchmark for future projects.

- Jan PijpersSenior Technical Artist - Square Enix

Perry has proven himself as a very consistent and skilled rigger and skinner during the last 4 years that I had the pleasure working with him.
He’s got a very good understanding of anatomy and what an animator needs to be able to easily animate with.
He’s written a skinning tool that makes skinning a breeze, even for impatient people like myself.
It is widely used within Sony Studios all over the world, which should tell you something about the quality of the tool.
As a lead working with Perry has been great, he is able to work autonomously to a consistent high quality and is a very pleasant person to hang out with.